


I wish I could be free again

by Mouseclarke



Category: Fallout (Video Games)
Genre: Caesar's Legion, Enclave, Escape, NCR | New California Republic, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mouseclarke/pseuds/Mouseclarke
Summary: Charles main theme:  - I Wish I Were in Love Again - Frank Sinatra
Kudos: 3





	I wish I could be free again

**Author's Note:**

> Charles main theme: - I Wish I Were in Love Again - Frank Sinatra

*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*

The rugged baseball he had in his hand was the only form of entertainment he could get in this hell hole. The place didn’t let you have books or holo movies. They restricted it, the same with outside contact to the world. Once you were here, you disappeared from the world, from society in the NCR. He shouldn’t dwell on that everyone he knows thinks he upped and left them. He has no family, their remains now lay at the bottom of the sea. He did have a kid back in 2250 with some girl he met in Klamath.

Named the kid Mouse Charlie Clarke. Mouse as a name is dumb as shit but she kept persisting and saying that she had some ancestor called Mouse, Charlie only came to be because of his nickname of “Charlie”. Never got to hold the surname that is von green, the kid’s ma said no to the idea, shot it down from the air quite fast. Plus he looked more like her than him, the emerald green eyes, the sickly pale skin, a face infested with freckles and a sharp pointy nose. 

This angered him that his own flesh and blood didn’t look like him. His previous son was a spitting image of him, a sparkling image of what a true pureblood enclave man should be. But the boy that was born in the nuclear hellscape was more feminine. He wound his arm again, ready for another throw, to soothe his boiling vat of anger and hatred. 

*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*

The sound gets repetitive fast to a man with freedom. But he isn’t, he’s stuck in a damp, dingy cell in Arizona. A few months ago he was up in Oregon in a chain gang building railway lines for the NCR military. But after stirring up enough trouble with the guards and refusing to do work. They sent him east, where tribals and cosplaying Romans ran rampant.

He had a bone to pick with tribals. After all one blew up his home with her ragtime group of friends that left him with nothing, his family gone, the friends he made snapped away from him. He had nothing back then and he still has nothing. In the past 12 years, he’s only sunken himself into a hole of self-loathing. It grows more and more, he’s just waiting by this point for himself to put a bullet in his forehead or the NCR to hang him.

The broken dates the endless waits  
The lovely loving and the hateful hates

“There it goes again,” muttered Charles, that damn album got on his nerves. The kid above played it all the time, no matter what time it was. It could be 2 in the goddamn morning and he would play it. Either he saw it as a way to yell out to the prison that he was better than everyone else or he gained some sick pleasure out of it. To keep reminding everyone that his sweet little “daddy” could get him out of anything.

The kid was some petty thief that was lucky enough to have an NCR senator as his father. He wasn’t able to weasel his son out of prison but he was able to let his son live in the lap of luxury until the end of his sentence. Letters, visits, parcels, not having to follow a schedule and a luxury cell fit with a vinyl player, silk bed sheets, clean clothes. He got all of it for himself. Never to be shared. 

Tibbets prison held the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, ex enclave, ex khan, slavers, thieves or if you were unlucky enough you could be innocent but some NCR politician had a vendetta against you. Many of the enclave that are here only came to call Tibbets home after fighting in the continuation war between the NCR and the enclave. They never wanted their great country to fall like it did, to fall because of some tribal that went to save her family. Many wanted to hunt her down and make an example out of her.

That never happened, she got to live. She was too clever to fall into any enclave traps. The egos of many ex enclave were shattered after the end of the war and they fell into a spiral of self-hatred. They no longer wanted to see another sunrise, they just wanted to never wake up from the nightmare they live in.

Charles lost his will to continue fighting for the enclave after stepping off the oil tanker. What's the point of fighting for what is dead? It's better to forget and get on with your life than die for something that is gone.

6 months on a chain gang for helping the enclave transformed into him serving an 8-year sentence for assault of an NCR officer. Bastard deserved it, he needed a good punch to the face to teach him a lesson. To silence his loud mouth from making comments about “the supposedly pure-blooded American”.

*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*

Charles looked around his cell, bewildered about the sound, he looked down at the baseball in the hand making sure it didn’t fall on the floor and caused it. It was still there in his hand, still looking battered and bruised as ever. 

*BANG*

“Attention prisoners of Tibbets prison remain in your cells. A lockdown is now occurring, thank you for your patience. ” the 200-year automated voice of a woman that was probably long dead ran out throughout the prison. The kid from upstairs seemed to be scared now his album turned off after the announcement. But it could be that the bangs were obscuring the music.

*BANG*

It seemed to be coming closer to him. Was it some sort of explosion or was it the robots marching down the halls of the prison. There's no way it could’ve been the robots their feet weren’t heavy enough to make it sound so loud. It wasn’t until Charles heard the cheers and laughter that was emitting from down the hallway.  
“We’re free, let's get out of here boys” he heard the excitement in the voice of the man that ran past his prison cell. Followed by a group of people running behind him laughing and cheering by the prospect that they could return back to their lives before arriving in this hell hole that the NCR used as a prison while they fought cosplaying romans. Was a matter of time before they would start making prisoners fight over this land, the rumours about the legion were that it was run by a kid, some 20 something-year-old who let some history books go over his head and made him form an empire full of tribes he had conquered.

*BANG* 

The explosion went off right beside him, throwing him across his cell and leaving smoke and rubble scattered across the place. *Cough* *Cough* Charles started coughing his lungs out to remove the dust from his throat. His eyes burned tears starting to form in his eyes, his throat felt like he had a spoonful of nails in it.

He touched the top of his left eyebrow, it felt warm and painful to the touch. He brought his hand to his eyes, with the very little vision he had left from the explosion. He saw his hand covered in blood. The robots weren’t going to help him if they saw the gaping hole in his cell wall that flipped his bed over. 

The dust was now clear, his vision was back, his eyes no longer burned and his throat was normal. He could see people running outside into the wasteland, he heard the robots coming. He picked himself up and ran. He ran. He ran as fast and as far as he could, he didn’t want to miss his opportunity of escape and he didn’t want to be in the cold grasps of the robots and NCR.

He would have been a sitting duck if stayed. Slowly waiting for the NCR to pick him for military service and fight for a place he doesn't want to nor lives in. He rather be murdered by a gecko than being stuck another minute in Tibbets.


End file.
